


See You Later, Space Cowboy

by Skew



Series: Spitfire [2]
Category: The Pacific - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skew/pseuds/Skew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war's been over a long time. The Alliance lost. It's a shame, but Andrew Haldane's put all of that behind him and made a new life as a bounty hunter, chasing intergalactic miscreants on the frontiers of settled space. It's not a bad life, as they go, but when he picks up a mysterious hitchhiker on the way to his next destination, it ends up stirring up a whole mess of old memories and new opportunities - which wouldn't be an unwelcome development, as long as he can make it out alive...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uniformly (scramjets)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/gifts).



> This takes place in the same setting as [The Stars Are Looking Lovely](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1711523), although you don't need to have read one to make sense of the other.
> 
> The title is a tip of the hat to Cowboy Bebop, which I was watching a lot of while working on the early drafts, and it has hence been ~~lovingly ripped off~~ the source of a lot of my inspiration in adding to the setting. Again, though, you don't need to have seen any of it to understand this (though I'd recommend it anyway as being pretty great on its own terms).

It wasn’t often that you encountered hitchhikers out here, on the fringes of settled space. When Andrew saw the hitcher’s beacon appear on the Mustang’s navigation screen, he’d assumed it was just the system playing up again. It was only when he docked at the service station and was greeted by a man floating towards him that he realised the signal had been genuine.

“Thank god you’re here,” the hitcher said, catching hold of one of the Mustang’s tail fins so he could bring himself to a halt. “Any chance I could catch a ride?”

“Where’re you heading?” Andrew said.

“Anywhere but here.”

“I’m going to Catalina, is that okay?” 

“I’ve been stuck here for three days. You know what it’s like being stuck on an unmanned service station with no gravity for three days? There ain’t nothing to eat but fauxtato chips outta the vending machines, and as for the toilets –” The hitcher shuddered.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Andrew said.

The hitcher grinned at him, pushing off from the tail fin towards him.

“You’re a gentleman, Mister – uh –“

“Call me Andrew,” Andrew said, holding out his hand. 

“Eddie,” the hitcher said, shaking his hand enthusiastically as he drifted by, eventually colliding gently with the nearest wall. “God dammit. I hate zero gravity,” he muttered to himself.

“Grab the refuelling lines while you’re over there, would you?” Andrew called.

“Sure.” 

Andrew used his hands to manoeuvre himself up the Mustang’s side and over its back, opening up a hatch near the tail end to expose a series of refuelling hubs. He looked over at Eddie to see how he was getting along with wrangling the various supply hoses, taking the opportunity to perform a quick visual assessment. 

He had the lanky build and pale skin of someone who’d grown up somewhere far from a star and with sub-Earth gravity, and between that and the accent Andrew guessed Old Colonies. His clothing was no indicator as to his origins, being a strange thrift-store jumble of items from different worlds and cultures, most of him hidden under dust-farmer’s robes that billowed around him whenever he moved. Something about his body language suggested ex-military; the weird attire and wild curly hair put an emphasis on the _ex_. Probably a drifter, Andrew decided, and probably harmless, but he’d be careful just in case.

“So, what brings you out here?” Andrew asked, as Eddie came back and passed over the first of the bundle of hoses. “Not many people come by these routes except truckers and smugglers.”

“And which are you?”

“Neither. Bounty hunter.”

“That explains the fancy ride,” Eddie said, giving the Mustang an appreciative look. “What make is she?”

“She’s a mutt,” Andrew said. “Started off as a second-hand RV, but between the modifications and the replacements there’s not much of the original still left. The engines and the navigation hardware are army surplus, the steering’s from a middleweight racer, and most of the rest’s been pieced together from custom-made components and scrap.” He’d originally called her the Mustang because she was about as easy to handle and comfortable to ride as a wild horse. However, years of constant refinement – plus the gradual improvement of his own piloting and engineering skills – had made her speedy, smooth-flying and, with her gleaming silver finish and gaudily painted nose and fins, really rather handsome. 

Although she was large enough for Andrew to comfortably live inside, with space for storage and for accommodating guests on the rare occasions that he had them, she was a tiny little thing compared to the spacefreighters that service stations like this were designed for. The process of filling the fuel tanks and emptying out the garbage was done within a couple of minutes.

“Go on in,” Andrew said to Eddie, gesturing towards the open doorway on the underside of the Mustang’s nose. “I’ll be back in a moment.” 

Andrew tidied away the refuelling lines, paid the charge, and returned to the Mustang. When he boarded, the first thing he saw was Eddie splayed flat against the ceiling of the entry-way, a terrified expression on his face.

“I think I set off your security system,” he said, sounding somewhat strained.

“Skipper!” Gunny barked through the Mustang’s speakers. “Caught this hobo tryin’ to sneak in while your back was turned, neutralised him for ya.”

Andrew sighed. “Gunny, I invited him in. Let him go.”

“Aye, Skipper.” Eddie dropped abruptly to the floor as the distribution of the Mustang’s artificial gravity returned to normal.

“I’m sorry about that,” Andrew said, offering him a hand up. “The ship’s AI is a bit temperamental.”

“You’re telling me,” Eddie said. “Does he greet all of your guests like that?”

“Not always. Sometimes he tries to electrocute them instead.”

Andrew hadn’t been a very experienced pilot when he’d first bought the Mustang, so he’d purchased a model with a GUNNAI installed – a Graphical User Networking and Navigation Artificial Intelligence. While the craft could be controlled entirely using the manual steering and the touchscreen information displays, the computer also had a personality and the ability to think independently, so Andrew could give it orders and let it run the ship as if he had an invisible co-pilot doing most of the work. The system worked pretty well for most routine operations. However, maybe there were some bugs in the software, or perhaps the mechanism by which the AI was meant to develop a persona that would complement your own had been programmed by someone with an eccentric sense of humour, because the Mustang's GUNNAI had a personality like a fighting pitbull. It was a good companion, for a computer - Andrew had taken to affectionately referring to it as 'Gunny' - but it didn't play well with others.

“So,” Andrew said, guiding Eddie towards a chair he could safely flop into, “you never did tell me how you got yourself stranded on an unmanned service station.”

“Not much to tell. I ain’t got no home; I just hitch around, try to find work where I can. Sometimes I get lucky and get to stick around for a month or two. And sometimes freighter pilots drop you in the middle of nowhere and fuck off into hyperspace.”

“Nice.”

“Shit happens.” Eddie shrugged. “So, what’s goin’ on in Catalina? Anything fun?”

“Could be. I had a tip-off that the DeLisle gang are in town – they’re a family of arms smugglers I’ve been keeping tabs on for a while. Any one of them’s worth a good price, and if I round up all four I’ll have enough to keep me going for months.” Andrew tapped at the nearest of the Mustang’s command screens, double-checking that the doors were sealed and setting the route for the next stage of the journey. “All set, Gunny?”

“All set, Skipper,” Gunny confirmed, as the engines hummed into life.

“Then we’re off to Catalina.”

 

Catalina was a place where what you saw was what you got, and what you saw was overwhelming. Only twenty years ago it had been a mere stopping-off point between mining colonies, with little more to it than the service station, a general store, and Big Suzie’s Brothel and Fried Chicken Shop. In recent years, however, the ongoing boom in ore prices, and its convenient location a long way from anywhere that could feasibly exert external control, had led to its development into a fully-fledged city-state. It was gaudy and wild and you could do pretty much anything you liked there, as long as you didn’t get on the wrong side of the Duchess – as Big Suzie, Catalina’s de facto ruler, liked to call herself these days.

When they dropped out of hyperspace, they were greeted by a riot of light and colour. Catalina itself was an unplanned jumble of different modules and developments that, taken together, looked like a tangled ball of multicoloured string. Orbiting around that was a neon halo of space junk and floating advertisements, along with spacecraft of all shapes and sizes materialising out of the hyperspace gates and approaching the docks as a jostling, undirected crowd. Andrew used to hate chaotic approaches like this, but now he preferred them to waiting in organised traffic – the Mustang was relatively small and sleek, and with a keen eye and a light touch on the controls he neatly weaved through the obstacles and landed them at the nearest dock.

It was more of a challenge fighting a way through the crowds to the transport tube that would take them into Catalina Central, an experience which never failed to leave Andrew bruised, disorientated, and usually missing any spare change or other unsecured items he had left in his pockets. Finally, however, they managed to scramble their way out of the crowded tube carriage and onto the open street. 

“Well, here we are,” Andrew said. “All in one piece?”

“Think so,” Eddie said, checking himself over, “though it was a close run thing for a while there.” 

There was an uncomfortable pause in which both waited for the other to move or speak. In the end, it was Eddie who was first to break the silence.

“So, uh, thanks for the ride, I guess. G’luck with the hunting.”

He made to move away, but Andrew blocked his path. Perhaps it was because he’d gone several weeks without anyone to talk to but Gunny, or perhaps because he felt it was unfair to leave someone in a place as dangerous as Catalina without setting them off in the right direction first, and it was probably at least a little to do with Eddie being rather good-looking in a hard-bitten frontiersman kind of way, but he didn’t want them to part ways just yet.

“Hey, what’s the rush?” he said. “Let’s get a drink and something to eat. You must be starving.”

Eddie laughed. “Yeah, alright. I ain’t gonna say no to free beer.”

“Beer? You’d be very lucky to find beer here. But I’m sure we can scrounge up something that probably won’t kill us.”

 

Beer didn’t travel well through hyperspace, and making spirits was difficult without a regular supply of the grain to make them from. As a result, the traditional drinks of the Old Colonies were rare and expensive here; in Catalina, your choice was between lurid cocktails made using powdered alcohol, or the potent and occasionally deadly local hooch, distilled from fermented fauxtato starch. 

Andrew personally favoured Miss Grey’s when he was drinking in Catalina. Miss Grey was a volatile character, by all reports, but the bar’s home blend was reliably safe, and the home-made fried grasshoppers were crisp, spicy and came in generous servings. He ordered two shots of the former and a bowl of the latter, and led Eddie to his favourite table at the back, where he had a good view of everyone else coming and going.

They had only just sat down when they were greeted by a familiar voice that Andrew had not expected, but was not at all surprised to hear.

“Hey, Ack-Ack. Long time, no see.”

Andrew twisted around to get a better look at the man peering down at them over the dividing panel between their tables. “Good morning, Snafu. Or is it evening here?”

“It’s feedin’ time at the shark tank, is what it is. Place is full ‘a bounty hunters tonight.”

Andrew had recognised several of his rivals as they had come in, and a second look over the assembled drinkers and diners confirmed the presence of quite a few more.

“Somethin’ big going on?” Snafu asked.

“It’d be unwise of me to say.”

“It’s the DeLisle gang, right?” Snafu smiled lazily. “Two of ‘em already down and the others on the run, so I heard. You might catch ‘em if you get back to your craft and hightail it after them. If all the other guys doin’ the same don’t blow your ass away first.”

Andrew cursed under his breath. That was the last thing he wanted – squabbling with other bounty hunters over the same case was a waste of time and effort, and it was plain rude to butt in on someone else’s pursuit. The others still here would be in the same situation as him, looking for other local cases to take. He’d be lucky if he could get a reward for finding a lost dog.

Snafu looked over Andrew’s head at Eddie, who was ploughing through the bowl of grasshoppers like a man starved (which, all things considered, he probably was). “Who’s your pal? He don’t say much.”

Eddie looked up, hastily swallowing a mouthful of grasshopper. “That’s alright. I ain’t got much to say.”

“Curious kinda accent you got there. You from the Old Colonies too?”

“New Virginia,” Eddie said.

Snafu’s eyes widened slightly. “Shit.”

“S’alright. Wasn’t you blew it up.”

“So how come you’re with Ack-Ack?”

Eddie frowned. “I wouldn’t say I’m with him. I just hitched a ride, and he offered to get me dinner as well.”

“Oh, I get it,” Snafu said, giving them both a look which suggested that whatever he’d ‘got’, neither of them were in on the joke. Andrew knelt on his seat so he could face Snafu eye-to-eye across the divider (and if it happened to block Snafu’s view of Eddie, that was a convenient bonus). 

“So since you’re here,” he said, in a low, quiet voice, “is there anything else you can tell me?”

“About what?”

“Guess.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Another drink, and I'll owe you a favour. Knowing you, you'll need it.”

Snafu shrugged. “Wish I could help, but I told you all I heard already.” Something buzzed in his pocket; he took out his messenger. “Anyhow, I gotta be at the docks in five.” 

Andrew knew better than to ask Snafu what his business was at the docks. “Well, it was good to see you. Tell Sledge I said hi."

“Sure thing, Skipper. See you around, maybe.” He leaned over Andrew’s shoulder to look at Eddie. “You too, hillbilly.”

Eddie looked perturbed. “Did he just call me –“

“Oh, don’t mind Snafu. We called him that for a reason.”

Eddie gave Andrew a thoughtful look. “He called _you_ Ack-Ack.”

“A lot of people do. It’s my initials, A.A.”

“He called you Skipper, too.”

“Your point being?”

“Never mind.” Eddie gave Andrew a look which could only be described as ‘extremely suspicious’ and attempted to follow it up with a long, thoughtful sip of his drink. The effect would have been quite intimidating if he hadn’t immediately broken out in a fit of coughing.

“Jeez louise, what is this? Rocket fuel?”

“Well, not officially, but you probably could use it that way. Do you want me to get you something to mix it with?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do it myself.”

While Eddie ventured off to the bar in search of something that would make Catalina spirit palatable, Andrew got out his battered old messenger and checked the local listings for new cases.

It was pretty slim pickings, all things considered. There were a few small cases available within a one-jump radius – a woman called Kathy had put out a bounty on her cheating husband, another guy was offering a reward for anyone who could get back his favourite pair of moccasins, the Enforcers were asking for information on some smugglers called Chuckler and Hoosier (where _did_ these guys get their names from?) – but it was all the sort of stuff that’d barely cover the expenses of taking the case in the first place.

The rest was all political, and Andrew didn’t much care for doing the Dictatorship’s dirty work. Officially, he was neutral. He’d happily take an Enforcer-sponsored case if it was someone who was no good anyway – murderers, pimps, drug traders, the usual criminal lowlife. But he didn’t do hit jobs, and he didn’t chase enemies of the state. After all, all it took to be declared an enemy was to speak up at the wrong time, or to have come from the wrong place, or to have fought on the wrong side. He was at least two out of those three, and had done a few things which could complete the set if the information got back to the Dictatorship, which one day it probably would. Not that it was a major concern. Even when they were on the government’s side, bounty hunters very rarely made it to retirement.

He scrolled past another listing asking for information on the whereabouts of the Secret Nine, noting idly that their bounty had been doubled, when Eddie returned with two more shots of spirit and a jug of pineapple juice. (While most fresh food was hard to come by here, hydroponics farmers had managed to ensure a reasonably stable supply of certain fruits, and the bugs that thrived in such conditions had become the staple protein of Catalina cuisine.)

“Hey, I recognise that guy,” he said, glancing down at Andrew’s messenger. He frowned and leaned in closer. “Damn, that’s Arturo Blix.”

“You know him?”

“Well, not personally.” Eddie sat down and topped up his drink with juice. “I was in the Solomons during the war.”

Well, that explained it. The Solomons were a string of rocky, irregular planetoids sharing a single orbit around a dull, red star. Supposedly they had originally been one giant planet that had shattered in its distant past, leaving behind jagged chunks and exposed sections of metallic core. Rich with gold and valuable ores, they had been named by human settlers in honour of King Solomon’s mines. Many prospectors and speculators had faced the challenging climate and dense forests in the hope of making their fortunes there. Few of them had succeeded.

Arturo Blix had been a big deal in the Solomons before war broke out between the Alliance and the Dictatorship, and he was an even bigger deal afterwards. While the other mine owners had fled, Blix had seen it as a business opportunity. First he’d just sold the goods his mines produced to the highest bidder; then he started allowing the land he owned to be used for bases and factories, and from there to actively working with the Dictatorship as a means of expanding both their influence and his economic interests. The mines of Solomon had always been dangerous, and most of the miners were indentured labourers who’d been forced by threats or starvation into signing years of their lives away, but under the war Blix’s workers became slaves, and his mines a place where the unfortunate were sent to die. When the Alliance arrived to try and take the Solomons for themselves, those same labourers and their guards became soldiers. A lot of Alliance fighters had died there – so, too, poorly supplied and challenged by the climate, had a lot of the Dictatorship’s troops. Nobody had done very well out of the Solomons campaign. Nobody except Arturo Blix.

Andrew had already guessed that Eddie had fought for the Alliance, and the admission came as no surprise. “Me too,” he said.

Eddie grinned. “Yeah, I figured that out, _Ack-Ack_.”

“I told you, it’s just my initials.”

“Ah, so it’s just a coincidence that you share a nickname and initials with the guy who single-handedly shot down all those incoming fighters at the Siege of Bay Forty-Nine? You’re just some _other_ war veteran who served in the Solomons, gets spoken to by his friends like an old company commander, and whose reasons for being cagey about his past have absolutely nothing to do with having fought the current government of half the colonised galaxy to practically the last man?”

“Well, since you clearly know your old Alliance Corps lore, you should know that that Ack-Ack Haldane had his head blasted off by a sniper on Brogol Point, and was never seen again.”

“Yeah, well. I got shot full of holes on that same damn mountain range, and I’m still here. I always did take the rumours with more ‘n a pinch of salt.”

Andrew sighed. “Okay, fine, I give in. Well done. I didn’t know anyone wanted me that badly, but I hope the reward’s good.”

Eddie laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic, I was only bein’ nosey. Like I said, I was at Brogol, we all heard the stories.” He leaned forward, resting on his elbows. “So what really happened?”

“Reports of my death were somewhat exaggerated,” Andrew said. It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked – once you got close enough it was hard to miss the faint scars that even DeTone fluid couldn’t fix completely, or the mismatched iris patterns which gave away that one of his eyes had been transplanted. “I caught a blast to the head, but I didn’t die – though it was a close thing. Enough to take me out of action for the rest of the war and then some.”

Eddie nodded. “Same here. I was out for six months while they were growing me a new digestive system. I finally wake up and the war’s over, the Alliance’s lost, my home’s gone…” He took the next shot neat, and then downed two glasses of juice to remove the taste. “You should take that Blix case. Half the shit that happened in the Solomons was down to him. You know it was him who poisoned the water supply on Brogol?”

“If I could, I would. There’s been a bounty on his head for years. First the Alliance and now –“ Andrew double-checked the advert. “-looks like the Dictatorship are sick of him too. But they wouldn’t be asking if they knew where to find him. Wherever he is, he’s got protection.” He shook his head, and scrolled onwards, looking for something a little more feasible.

“Enough about my work, anyway,” he said, and snapped the messenger shut. “What are your plans?”

Eddie shrugged. “Place as big as this, there’ll be work somewhere, and I figure if they don’t check us coming in nobody’s gonna be too fussy about ID papers or work permits, neither. Long as I got something to eat, a place to sleep, and I don’t have to sign away my freedom for the privilege, I’m good.” He wiped the grease from his fingers, had another glass of juice, and got to his feet. “Thanks for the ride and the meal. I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it,” Andrew said. “You won’t stay for another drink?”

“Best not. It’s going to my head already.” Eddie touched his fingertips to his forehead in an informal salute. “Nice meeting you, Ack-Ack.”

“You too,” Andrew said. He watched as Eddie left, sipping thoughtfully at his drink. Something about how quickly he’d got under his skin and figured out his past had rattled him. He had the strangest feeling that as long as he remained on Catalina, this wasn’t the last they’d seen of one another. He was looking forward to the next time already.


	2. Chapter 2

Andrew was getting nowhere. Every time he tried to pick up a case, either the target skipped town or someone else got to them first. What was worse, he couldn't even go some place else – with his funds as low as they were, the only way he could afford the fuel and permits to get to the nearest settlement was if he didn't mind not eating for the next month. 

He was sitting alone in Miss Grey's, restlessly checking and re-checking the listings in the hope that something promising would show up, when he heard the scrape of a chair being pulled back, and a long, dark figure sat down beside him.

"Eddie!" he said. "Didn't recognise you for a moment there."

Eddie had had a shave and a haircut since Andrew had seen him last, and traded his travelling clothes for a tailored grey suit.

"You look like you've done well for yourself," Andrew said.

"I got lucky. I applied for a job sweepin' floors at the Duchess' palace – and well, I didn't get that, but I did get talking to one of the guys who plays in the band she has at all her fancy functions, and he said they were lookin' for a new guitarist, and well, I guess one thing led to another."

"You’re working for the Duchess?" Andrew said, eyes widening.

"Big music lover, apparently. And formation dancing's all the rage with these society types. You know, that old-fashioned style with the guy calling out the steps, like in Jane Austen. Not really my style, but the pay's good." (It is worth noting at this point that few records had survived from the Pre-Colonial Era. Historians were divided over how much resemblance the formation dancing described in literature of the Terrestrial Imperial Period bore to the sort that was practiced in the First American Empire, but outside of academia they were generally assumed to be the same. No adaptation of a Regency romance was complete without a scene where the hero and heroine flirted during a square-dance, their increasing proximity inevitably thwarted by the caller's instruction to change partners.)

"So, how 'bout you?" Eddie said.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Everyone's suddenly become good-mannered and law-abiding. It's terrible."

"In that case, then, the drinks are on me."

"You're a good man, Eddie."

Eddie brought a couple of glasses of spirit to the table – no pineapple juice this time, he'd adjusted fast – and pulled his chair in close.

"I'm glad I found you here," he said, lowering his voice. "I've been checking this place out a few nights now, hoping you'd drop in."

Andrew raised his eyebrows. "I'm flattered."

"I got a lead for you. You remember we was talking about Arturo Blix?"

"Go on."

"He's here. In Catalina."

Andrew put his hand on Eddie's arm. "I'm really grateful that you wanted to help, but there's rumours everywhere. If I had a penny for every time I'd heard that a big bounty was right where I was staying, I'd hardly need to chase bounties at all."

"I've seen him."

Andrew glanced around, checking nobody was listening, and leaned in close. "Where?"

"He's living in a private room at the Duchess' palace. He's gone real weird – goes everywhere with a team of bodyguards, hardly ever leaves his lodgings. Smart move, though. This place is a long way from anywhere else, ain’t much in the way of law, Dictatorship don’t care enough to send Enforcers and the Duchess won’t turn him in as long as he keeps paying her more than his bounty’s worth – which I guess he probably can."

"You're sure it's him?"

"Well, he don't look all that healthy, but everyone says it's him and I got no reason to believe it ain't."

Andrew nodded. "The problem with that is, if he stays at the palace all the time, how am I going to get it to catch him?"

"Ah, well, he isn't there all the time – twice a week, he plays poker at the Monkey's Hand."

"I'm not sure getting into a private poker game would be any easier than breaking into the Duchess' palace. I guess it couldn't hurt to try, though."

Eddie's face lit up. "You're gonna do it?"

"It's the best option I've got." Andrew grabbed a napkin and scribbled down his messenger code on it, pushing it across the table towards Eddie. "Here's my messenger details. If you hear anything about Blix going out, let me know. If I get him, I'll give you a cut of the bounty."

Eddie smiled crookedly as he took the napkin. "Don’t bother. It'll be worth it just to see him get what's comin' to him."

 

Andrew had the rare gift of feeling at ease in almost any situation, but he had to admit, the Monkey's Hand had him spooked.

In the first place, he'd never been much of a gambler. Prior to starting this hunt, his experience with it had been limited to one brief, disastrous game of Schrodinger's Cat that he'd played while on shore leave in Melba. He had won back his stake by correctly betting on 'alive', but having the damn thing leap out and nearly claw his face off when he opened the box made it hardly worth it.

There was also the fact that long cons and elaborate deceptions were just not his style. Andrew was of the opinion that coming up with complicated schemes to trap bounties was like dressing up as a dolphin to go fishing – sure, it might work, but there were almost always quicker and more practical ways to achieve the same result.

And then there was the Monkey's Hand itself. Catalina had an abundance of big flashy casinos full of gullible tourists, but the Monkey's Hand was a private club in a quiet part of town. It was the kind of place where both the leather seats and the cigars being smoked around the tables were real, rather than their much more common synthetic equivalents, and if it wasn't for the doormen being dissatisfied with their lot and easily bribed, Andrew would never had had a chance of getting in.

But he was in. So now all he had to do was make sure Blix was here, talk his way into the same game, and make his capture before he gambled away all of his funds or everyone else realised that he didn't really know how to play poker. Oh, and then he'd somehow have to get Blix safely out of the club, into the Mustang and ideally away into hyperspace before the club management, Blix's security guards or any rival bounty hunters who might have heard similar rumours and had similar ideas got hold of them. Straightforward, really.

 

Talking his way into the game, at least, was relatively easy; while waiting at the bar in the hopes of catching Blix making an entrance, he found himself talking to Kyosuke and Sven Yamaguchi, brothers in their early twenties who one day stood to inherit a large part of the Yamaguchi-Nilsson ship-building empire. They freely admitted that they were here to see and be seen more than for the love of the game. With resources like theirs, it didn't matter if you lost a few billion here or there. It was tough for Andrew to hide his alarm at the kind of stakes which were apparently commonplace – Kyosuke cheerfully recounted the time that he'd briefly won ownership of both moons of Mars, only to lose them within the next couple of hands – but it wasn't as if he was planning to stick around long enough to pay his dues.

They were insistent he join them, and so Andrew found himself sitting around the poker table with one of the strangest groups of people he'd ever been in the company of. In addition to the Yamaguchi brothers, there was an elderly woman who appeared to be more coat than person, a priest of the Unorthodox Church wearing a glittery mitre, a cigar trader with two robot arms (in addition to his two non-robotic ones) – and there, directly opposite Andrew, was Arturo Blix.

He didn't look the way Andrew had expected. The white suit he had worn in the Solomons had been traded in for funereal black, and he had lost a lot of weight without losing the excess skin, giving him the grim, jowly look of a bulldog. He was accompanied by three uncannily similar-looking women, all of them tall, blonde and also dressed in black – one held his cards, another played them, and the third just stood there with her arms folded, looking at everyone over the top of her InfoVisor like a disapproving teacher.

"He's always like this," Sven Yamaguchi whispered to Andrew as they sat down. "Has this obsession with dirt, won't ever touch the cards or chips himself. I guess being on the run all that time's made him a little cuckoo."

"Personally, dear boy," said the old woman in the coat, having overheard Sven's unsubtle stage whisper, "I feel a man of his wealth and stature is entitled to a few eccentricities. When I was young, no aristocrat was worthy of the name unless they had something outlandish about them. Why, I used to go everywhere on spring-loaded kangaroo boots, until my damned knees made it not worth the bother."

Andrew chuckled, and she gave him a sharp, critical look. "I haven't seen you here before, young man. Tell us a little about yourself."

"I'm a big game hunter, ma'am," he said.

"I wasn't aware there was enough money in that for the kinds of games we play. The boys did warn you that this is a high-stakes table?" the woman said.

Andrew smiled. "Well, my father's something of a name in the textile industry back in the Old Colonies. But hunting's how I prefer to spend my time."

He had decided that if pressed he would try and stick as close to the truth as possible, rather than entangle himself in a web of lies, but even that was enough to make him a little worried – what if the woman was an expert on the textile trade, and forced him to admit that his dad was just the overseer on a factory floor? Luckily for him, however, the rest of the table were far more interesting in talking about themselves than they were with interrogating him, and his ability to keep up the bullshit wasn't tested too far. He was happy to sit back and listen, making harmless little interjections when the flow of conversation seemed to require it, and played in a slapdash manner, not caring too much whether he won or lost the hand.

He made it long enough to outlast Blix, but when he went out, Andrew followed shortly after, joining him and the other losers back at the bar. Blix's bodyguards had moved far away enough to not be breathing over his shoulder, though were still looking on warily from a table nearby.

"Looks like it's not our day," Andrew said cheerfully. "Shall I get this round?"

Blix smiled seraphically. "If you like, though none for me, please. I'm a strict teetotaller these days."

Andrew ordered the group all songfruit coolers - an old favourite of the Solomon plantations, made with rum and mint and the native songfruit, so named because of the eerie, fluting noise that was made when the wind blew through the dried husks that still hung on the trees.

"It's been a long time since I saw one of those," Blix said ruefully, as Andrew raised the glass of shimmering orange liquid to his lips. "Though personally I always preferred mimosas. One of those, ice-cold, watching the sunset – that's the only thing I miss about the Solomons."

"You didn't like it there?" Andrew said.

"Vile place. The heat, the flies, the dryness... As I'm sure you know, Captain Haldane."

Andrew went still. He wasn't panicking, not just yet, but that wasn't quite what he'd expected.

"It's been a long time since I was captain of anything," he said.

"And it's been a long time since I was a plantation owner," Blix replied. "Oh, don't look so surprised. I've had a bounty on my head for years – do you really think I wouldn't take precautions? I have a security team wholly dedicated to checking the backgrounds of each person I meet. We didn't even have to go looking to find out who you were; as soon as my bodyguard saw you through her InfoVisor, it matched your face to the image in our database of known bounty hunters."

"Okay then," Andrew said, quickly draining the rest of his drink. "In that case, we might as well get down to business. Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

Blix smiled. "Don't be ridiculous. Do you really think I'd risk being here at all?"

He disappeared.

Andrew swore. How could he have missed it? Blix's aversion to touching things wasn't anything to do with cleanliness – he was using a goddamn hologram. The real Blix had been at home in a remote projection suite the whole time.

He had very little time to dwell on his stupidity, however, as the three bodyguards had noticed the conversation and were making their way towards him, guns drawn and ready. Andrew ran for it.

The main entrance was too far away, so he dashed out of the fire exit and down a metal staircase on the outside of the building, racing down the steps two at a time until he came to an abrupt halt, catching the railing just before he ran off the edge where the staircase ended.

One of the many problems with Catalina was that it wasn't really designed for pedestrians. Like most completely artificial space settlements, it didn't have any ground as such. Instead it was made up of numerous long, tube-shaped segments radiating out from a central hub, with the buildings set into the walls. Exactly which was way up depended on what setting each region had put the artificial gravity on, and that could vary from district to district, even building to building. This was why Andrew had stuck to the hub district for most of the time – outside of it, the whole place was an Escherian nightmare that was hell to navigate without some kind of flying machine.

It was a side-effect of this kind of unregulated, erratic city geography that it was quite common for structures such as tunnels, bridges and fire exits to have once connected to solid ground or another building, but due to the neighbourhood shifting around it, to now terminate in thin air. This was what had happened to Andrew.

He looked around. Nowhere he could jump to within reach. Above him he could hear the sound of the bodyguards running down the stairs. Only one thing for it, then.

He leapt.

As he fell, he reached into his jacket and pulled an oddly-shaped gun from his shoulder holster – small and squat, with a wide muzzle and a strap attached to the grip. He wound the strap around his hand to secure the gun in place, aimed upwards, and fired.

The gun's muzzle spat out a length of rope with a ball on the end which moved of its own accord, sensors searching out the nearest suitable object to fix on. It steered itself towards the fire escape that Andrew had jumped from and wound around the railing. A few seconds later, the rope ran out and Andrew came to a sudden, painful stop, hanging in mid-air.

He looked down, swallowing down the wave of queasy vertigo which washed over him. No obvious footholds within reach, or anywhere he could drop onto safely. There were other buildings nearby, though, one or two with balconies that might just be within jumping distance if he got up a bit of momentum. First, though, he wanted to make a call.

He let go of the gun with his left hand, leaving him hanging only by the one still strapped to the grip, and pulled his messenger out of his pocket. It went unanswered for several long, agonising moments.

"Hey," Eddie said, sounding rather groggy. "What's going on? You woke me up."

"Eddie, I'm really sorry," Andrew said. "I don't have much time to talk, but I need you to do me a really big favour."

"What's up? Are you in trouble?" Eddie sounded much more alert now.

"I'll be fine, I just need you to call me a cab. Sector 58, Level 12, round the back of the Monkey's Hand –" He glanced around. "I'm directly opposite the Vega Bank building. If you approach from beneath you'll see me."

"I'm not far away, I can get there on the metro in five –"

"No, it really needs to be a cab. Or anything that can fly."

A shot whizzed past Andrew's head; he looked up and saw that the bodyguards had got to the bottom of the staircase and were leaning over the side, trying to get a decent angle to shoot at him from.

"Was that a blaster?" Eddie said, growing increasingly agitated.

"Yes, but don't worry about that, just get the cab," Andrew said.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm flagging one down right now –"

Another shot whizzed by, catching Andrew’s left shoulder. His arm spasmed in reflex, fingers losing their grip on the messenger. 

"Shit," he muttered, watching it fall until it was too distant to be seen. 

He heard further blaster shots being discharged, but didn't feel their heat; looking up, he realised that the guards were now trying to shoot out the railing instead. Blasters weren't all that good at getting through metal, but considering that there were three of them and the fire escape was pretty old, Andrew didn't fancy his chances. He braced his feet against the side of the building and pushed off, trying to get some momentum going so he could hurl himself across to the nearest balcony. He'd most likely end up with some broken bones in addition to his burned shoulder, but that would at least be an improvement on being dead.

Something sped past him, flinging him back against the wall.

"Andrew?" he heard a voice call. "What the hell's going on?"

He tried to twist around as best he could, seeing Eddie leaning out of a yellow taxi hovering nearby.

"I'll explain later," he shouted back. "Just get me in the cab!"

Eddie nodded, and twisted round to talk to the driver. A blaster shot bounced off the cab's roof – Andrew looked up and saw that two of the bodyguards were now aiming at the cab, while the other was still working on the railings. The rate of fire increased as the cab drew nearer, one shot pinging off the door, another skimming across Eddie's knuckles as he stretched out his hand.

"Don't come out, just move next to me and get ready to catch!" Andrew called, swinging to avoid another blast. He braced himself against the building and kicked off with his feet, at the same time pressing a button on the gun to undo the knot and retract the wire.

It was far from a dignified landing. He only made it halfway into the cab, rocking it sideways with the force of impact. Eddie grabbed him by around the waist and hauled him in, helping wrangle him through the gap between the driver and passenger seats and into the back, then slamming the passenger door shut just in time to avoid being hit in the side by another blaster shot.

The cab driver glanced over his shoulder at Andrew. "Where to, pal?"

"Anywhere but here," Andrew groaned.

 

"I'm amazed he didn't charge us more," Eddie said as they boarded the Mustang.

"You've never been in a cab in Catalina before, then. Some say that the cab drivers here have their ability to feel surprise surgically erased, as otherwise they'd never be able to do the job," Andrew said. "Of course, some say that Catalina cab drivers suck the moisture out of ducks. All I know is, they do a very good job in the circumstances."

He kicked off his shoes and flopped into the nearest seat. His head was pounding and he ached all over; quite aside from the pain of the blaster burn, he was pretty sure he'd strained most of the muscles in his shoulders and sides. Plus, there was now a huge burn hole in his jacket. He'd liked that jacket.

"How're you feeling?" Eddie asked, giving him a concerned look.

"I'll live," Andrew said. "Do you mind getting my first aid kit? It's in the cabinet in the bathroom – door at the back, right-hand side."

Eddie nodded. "Sure thing."

He returned a couple of minutes later with the box, putting it down on the nearest table and opening the lid. "What d'you need?"

"DeTone and dressings. And grab the jar of painkillers, too, the blue one."

Eddie nodded, taking them out and lining them up on the table. Andrew slowly got to his feet. Now the excitement of the chase was faded, the pain was really starting to make itself known. He shook out a couple of painkiller tablets into his palm and swallowed them dry, then started to take off his jacket. His shoulder angrily protested the movement, sending waves of pain through him that made him feel disorientated, forcing him to steady himself against the table.

"Here, let me," Eddie said. Andrew nodded, allowing Eddie to step forward and help ease off his jacket and then his shirt. He watched Eddie as he picked up the bottle of DeTone fluid, smearing some over his own slightly burned knuckles first, before he reached out and began applying it to Andrew's shoulder. Andrew winced.

"Sorry, I'm trying to be as gentle as I can," Eddie said.

"You're doing great," Andrew said. He felt weirdly exposed, not quite able to bring himself to look at Eddie's face, so he watched his hands instead. "If it wasn't for you, I'd be toast right now."

"Ah, I'm sure you'd have found a way out," Eddie said, finishing with the DeTone and reaching for the dressings. Andrew glanced at the burn – it was already looking a little less angry and red, and the sting was beginning to subside.

"You might not believe me, but I don't normally get into that much trouble when on a mission," Andrew said.

"Suuuure," Eddie said, carefully laying the dressing over Andrew's shoulder and pressing it into place. "I bet it's nothin' but shoot-outs and high-speed chases, and you're just trying to stop me worrying about you."

"You worry about me?"

"I've only known you a few weeks and so far I know of two times in your life you've nearly died. Somebody needs to watch your back."

"Are you volunteering?"

"Reckon I've been doing a pretty good job so far."

Andrew considered it. "You've done a fantastic job. It's brought it home to me just how difficult I've been making it for myself by working alone. So, if you don't mind the erratic pay and the strange hours and having me around all the time – well, then, I'd be honoured to have you as my partner."

Eddie smiled broadly. "And I'd be honoured to be your partner."

"Then it's a deal," Andrew said. "Welcome aboard."

He had intended to shake on it, but at the same instant as he raised his hand, Eddie leaned in and kissed him. For a second or two he was startled, and then instinct took over and he pushed back into the kiss, his hands settling on Eddie's hips and pulling him in closer, Eddie wrapping his arms around Andrew's waist.

Eddie pulled back, forehead still resting against Andrew's.

"Wait, that was what you meant by partner, right?" he said.

"Honestly, no, but I think it was going that way anyway," Andrew said, and leaned in to kiss him again, raising a hand to cup Eddie's face. "I'm going to have to get used to you figuring out what I want before I do, aren't I?"

Eddie laughed quietly and laid a series of kisses along Andrew's jaw, his fingers stroking over the skin just above the waistband of his pants. "Reckon it ain't difficult figuring out what you want most of the time," he murmured in Andrew's ear. "'Specially right now."

"Are you two gonna get a room or what?" Gunny's voice blared through the speaker.

Andrew jumped back, startled. "Gunny, for crying out loud."

"Just sayin', Skipper," Gunny said. "I don't want you getting my machinery all sticky. Take it to your bunkroom."

Eddie glanced around, as if trying to work out the best part of the ship to direct his disgruntled glare at. "You can turn him off, right?"

"Mm-hm," Andrew nodded, jabbing angrily at the nearest control panel.

"I'm just tryin' to keep a orderly ship -" Gunny protested, before falling silent, the lights on the ship's panels turning off, leaving behind only the soft glow of the auxiliary lights. Andrew turned back to Eddie, who was looking at him with a look somewhere between affection and amused disbelief.

"I'm sorry about him," Andrew said, slipping his arms around Eddie's waist again. "Now, where were we?"


End file.
